{"id":65524,"date":"2020-04-29T09:12:59","date_gmt":"2020-04-29T13:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=65524"},"modified":"2020-05-12T13:08:39","modified_gmt":"2020-05-12T17:08:39","slug":"faculty-focus-stephen-cheungs-life-has-come-full-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2020\/04\/faculty-focus-stephen-cheungs-life-has-come-full-cycle\/","title":{"rendered":"FACULTY FOCUS: Stephen Cheung\u2019s life has come full-cycle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note: Faculty Focus is a monthly series that highlights faculty whose compelling passions, innovative ideas and various areas of expertise help weave together the fabric of Brock University\u2019s vibrant community. For more from the series, click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

When Stephen Cheung\u2019s parents taught him how to ride a bicycle in their native Hong Kong, they likely had no idea where it would take him.<\/p>\n

Cheung, a Professor of Kinesiology at Brock University and former Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Environmental Ergonomics, describes his path as being somewhat circuitous. He got his first degree from the University of British Columbia in Oceanography and Zoology, neither of which have anything to do with humans and exercise.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce I decided I wanted to go to graduate school and really pursue academics, I wanted to figure out how to make myself faster,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Cheung never thought of cycling as a sport until the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, where Niagara\u2019s Steve Bauer captured Canada\u2019s first-ever road cycling Olympic medal \u2014 and Cheung\u2019s attention \u2014 when he took silver.<\/p>\n

It was a defining moment in Cheung\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t even know people raced bikes,\u201d says Cheung. \u201cI sat in front of the TV transfixed for three hours and then jumped on my old $100 department store bike and rode 35 km. I came home completely destroyed and exhausted but with a stupid grin on my face.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cheung says he owes everything good in his life to the sport. It\u2019s how he met his wife, Debbie, with whom he has two sons.<\/p>\n

\u201cI played high school basketball, but I always tell my boys I was the star benchwarmer,\u201d he says. \u201cNobody sat on the bench as long as I did. I was very dedicated to that. With cycling, I thought, \u2018You\u2019re telling me there\u2019s a sport with no coach telling me I can\u2019t play? Okay, sign me up.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Cheung\u2019s first academic job was at Dalhousie University before being recruited to Brock with a CRC offer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always joked that if you\u2019re going to be that irresponsible with an offer, I\u2019m going to take you up on it,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s been a fabulous move in every single way. I have a lot of support. I really love and value that.\u201d<\/p>\n

He recalls a meeting with then-Dean of Applied Health Sciences John Corlett, who told Cheung something that immediately made him feel at home.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe basically said, \u2018As a CRC, you may think you have all this pressure or that the University expects certain things from you, but we love what you do and just want you to do it here,\u2019\u201d says Cheung. \u201cI took myself much further than I would\u2019ve if someone was telling me exactly what I had to do. Brock trusted that I would push myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he certainly has.<\/p>\n

One memorable study simulated an arctic survival situation in his lab\u2019s temperature-controlled chamber, which involved participants shivering for 24 hours straight while eating survival rations and no water.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a logistically crazy study to organize,\u201d he recalls of the experiment, which was \u201cexactly as uncomfortable as it sounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite this, he doesn\u2019t have a hard time finding study subjects.<\/p>\n

An active member of the local cycling community, he has a direct pipeline to athletes, and his students are passionate enough to literally take the plunge.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s really fun about environmental physiology is that it\u2019s intuitively obvious why it matters,\u201d says Cheung, who describes his work as paradoxical due to hating the cold. \u201cEverybody has been cold; everybody\u2019s been hot; sometimes to the extreme. This field allows you to use extreme temperature to push humans to extreme levels. People are inherently interested in seeing how far they can go.\u201d<\/p>\n

What was so novel about his arctic experiment is that the majority of survival models are based on research that\u2019s approximately two hours long. Cheung and his team pushed it to 24 hours, which had never been done before.<\/p>\n

Cheung teaches KINE 3P90 (Cardiorespiratory and Environmental Physiology), which he says is right up his alley.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love teaching it and I tend to get at least a few students every year who get excited about the research and the lab,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

While on sabbatical in Kelowna, B.C., last year, Cheung and his family took up bouldering, rock climbing and snowboarding.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a dad, it was great to have that joy of learning together,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Near the end of his sabbatical, Cheung had a serious rock climbing accident that left him with a dislocated and broken foot.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was kind of lucky to be alive,\u201d he says. \u201cI fell about four metres, unsupported, onto a rock ledge. It was a bad injury, but very localized.\u201d<\/p>\n

Life has come full circle for Cheung, who now regularly rides with Bauer (ideally in perfect cycling temperature, which is about 10 or 11 degrees Celsius). They both belong to the St. Catharines Cycling Club, and the Steve Bauer trail winds its way behind Cheung\u2019s Fonthill home.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started in kinesiology thinking I\u2019d be a cycling scientist,\u201d he says. \u201cSince early in my career, I\u2019ve been writing a lot of sports science pieces about cycling for a website and also two books. Now I\u2019m equally, if not more known, for my cycling science writing than my actual real science. I\u2019m not any faster on the bike, but am doing what I originally wanted to do going into grad school. It\u2019s kind of funny how life works out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Stephen Cheung\u2019s parents taught him how to ride a bicycle in their native Hong Kong, they likely had no idea where it would take him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":65575,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36,7,3319,1,4],"tags":[28,423,3244,996,8634,7488,15,2998,5506],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65524"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65524"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65830,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65524\/revisions\/65830"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}